Jerez de la Frontera

Jerez de la Frontera (Spanish pronunciation: [xeˈɾeθ ðe la fɾonˈteɾa]), or simply Jerez (pronounced [xeˈɾeθ]), is a Spanish city and municipality in the province of Cádiz in the autonomous community of Andalusia, in southwestern Spain, located midway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Cádiz Mountains. As of 2015[update], the city, the largest in the province, had a population of 212,876. It is the fifth largest in Andalusia, and has become the transportation and communications hub of the province, surpassing even Cádiz, the provincial capital, in economic activity. Jerez de la Frontera is also, in terms of land area, the largest municipality in the province, and its sprawling outlying areas are a fertile zone for agriculture. There are also many cattle ranches and horse-breeding operations, as well as a world-renowned wine industry (Xerez).

Since 1987 the Grand Prix motorcycle racing has been held at the Circuito de Jerez in early May. On this weekend, the city welcomes tens of thousands of bikers from around the world. The same circuit has hosted several Formula 1 Grands Prix, including the 1997final race of the season, which was marred with controversy for a notable high-profile championship-deciding incident. Other popular festivals in the city are Feria de Jerez or the Holy Week in Jerez.

Jerez is known as the city of flamenco, sherry, horses and motorcycles. In 2013, Jerez was the European Capital of Wine and 2014, it was the world's first Motorbike Capital.

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The name Jerez goes back to the Phoenician Xera, Sèrès, later Romanized under the name of Ceret; the location of this settlement, however, remains unknown.[citation needed]

The classical Latin name of Asta Regia, unrelated to the present name, referred to an ancient city now found within Mesas de Asta, a rural district approximately 11 km (6.84 mi) from the center of Jerez.

The current Castilian name came by way of the Arabic name شريشSherīsh.[2] In former times, during the Muslim period in Iberia, it was called Xerez or Xerés (pronounced /ʃeˈɾes̪/ in Old Spanish). The name of the famous fortified wine, sherry, which originated here (although some argue that it originated in Shiraz, Persia), represents an adaptation of the city's Arabic name, Sherish. Frontera refers to a Spanish frontier, located on the border between the Moorish and Christian regions of Spain during the 13th century, a regular host to skirmishes and clashes between the two regions. Over two centuries later, after the Castilian conquest of Granada in 1492, Xerez definitively lost its status as a frontier city, but did not lose that designation.

After the Kingdom of Castile took Jerez on October 9, 1264, following the name given by the Muslims to the city in the period known as the Reconquista, the city was then called Xerez in medieval Castilian, transcribing the consonant /ʃ/ (like the English sh) with the letter ⟨x⟩, as was the rule at the time. Thus the name was pronounced "Shereth", similar to the Moorish Arabic "Sherish". In the 16th century, the consonant /ʃ/ changed into the consonant /x/, with the corresponding spelling of Jerez.

The old spelling "Xerez" as the name given to the city survived in several foreign languages until very recently, and today continues to influence the name given to sherry: PortugueseXerez[ʃəˈɾɛʃ], Catalan Xerès[ʃəˈɾɛs], English sherry/ˈʃɛri/, French Xérès[ɡzeʁɛs]. The city's main football team continues to use the old spelling, Xerez.

Traces of human presence in the area date from the upper Neolithic, and humans have inhabited Jerez de la Frontera since at least the Copper or Neolithic Age, but the identity of the first natives remains unclear. The first major protohistoric settlement in the area (around the third millennium BC) is attributed to the Tartessians.[3] Jerez later became a Roman city under the name of Asta Regia.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Vandals and the Visigoths ruled it until the Arabs conquered the area in 711. In the 11th century it briefly became the seat of an independent taifa. Some years later 'Abdun ibn Muhammad united it with Arcos and ruled both (ca. 1040-1053). In 1053 it was annexed to Seville. From 1145 to 1147 the region of Arcos and Jerez briefly operated as an emirate under dependency of Granada, led by Abu'l-Qasim Ahyal. Later the Almohads conquered the city. In the 12th and 13th centuries Jerez underwent a period of great development, building its defense system and setting the current street layout of the old town.

In 1231 the Battle of Jerez took place within the town's vicinity: Christian troops under the command of Álvaro Pérez de Castro, lord of the House of Castro and grandson of Alfonso VII, king of Castile and León, defeated the troops of the Emir Ibn Hud, despite the numerical superiority of the latter. After a month-long siege in 1261, the city surrendered to Castile, but its Muslim population remained. It rebelled and was finally defeated in 1264.

The discovery of the Americas and the conquest of Granada, in 1492, made Jerez one of the most prosperous cities of Andalusia through trade and through its proximity to the ports of Seville and Cádiz. Despite the social, economic and political decadence that occurred in the seventeenth century, towards the end of the Habsburg rule, the city managed to maintain a reasonable[citation needed] pace of development, becoming world-famous for its wine industry.

The city of Jerez is governed by the ayuntamiento (municipality) of Jerez, whose representatives, as in other towns in Spain, are elected every four years by universal suffrage for all citizens older than 18 years of age. The body is chaired by the mayor of Jerez.

Currently, the mayor is María del Carmen Sánchez Díaz, known as Mamen Sánchez, member of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, who won the municipal election in 2015, by the aid of Ganemos Jerez and IULV-CA.

The economy of Jerez has traditionally been centred on the wine industry, with exports of sherry worldwide. Because it lacks the civil service that other cities enjoy, Jerez has based its economy on industry. The cultivation of fruits, grains, and vegetables and horse and cattle husbandry has also been important to the local economy. It is the home base for the Spanish Military Stud farm, the Yeguada Militar de Jerez de la Frontera.

After the wine crisis in the 1990s, the city is now seeking to expand its industrial base. Tourism has been successfully promoted. The city's strong identity as a center for wine, flamenco, and horses, its popular festivals, MotoGP hosting and its historical heritage have contributed to this success.

The city is the home of Jerez Airport and has also been positioning itself as a logistics hub for western Andalucia, through the integration between the airport, the rail system and nearby ports.

Jerez de la Frontera and the rest of the Cádiz metropolitan area has a Subtropical–Mediterranean climate, yet for its situation being inland (specially the airport which is more inland than the city) the Atlantic influences are small, it is characterized by mild, short winters with occasional cool nights and hot, long summers with occasional very hot temps, unlike the surrounding coastal areas which are characterized by very mild winters and long warm summers. Most of the rain falls from October to January, while the summers are very dry but not rainless. For its situation being inland, the daytime temps are bigger than in the coast, as well as the lows are cooler, with a difference of at least 10 ºC between the highs and the low temps during every month. The average annual temperature is 24.4 °C (76 °F) during the day and 11.9 °C (53 °F) at night. The average annual precipitation is 570 mm (22.4 in) per year, concentrated in the months of October through April. December is the wettest month with 109 mm (4.3 in). The city averages 53 rainy days, 137 clear days and 2,965 hours of sunshine a year. Snow is extremely rare, and it is even more infrequent than in most of the southern European islands. The last snowfall recorded in the city happened in February 2, 1954. Since then, no snowfall has been recorded. [4]

Jerez has a reputation as the world capital of sherry wine. Sherry is a fortified wine made from white grapes grown near the town of Jerez. Jerez has been a centre of viniculture since the Phoenicianswinemaking to Spain in 1100 BC. The Romans continued the practice after they took control of Iberia around 200 BC. The Moors conquered the region in AD 711 and introduced distillation, which led to the development of brandy and fortified wine. Sherry became very popular[when?] in Great Britain. Because sherry was a major wine export to the United Kingdom, many English companies and styles developed. British families founded many of the Jerez cellars.

The city has many bodegas (wineries), many of which are of British origin. The most important include:

Williams & Humbert: This is a winery located in Jerez de la Frontera dedicated to the production of sherry wines and brandies and other liqueurs. Sir Alexander Williams and Arthur Humbert founded it in 1877.

Grupo Garvey: William Garvey Power founded Grupo Garvey in 1780. As of 2018[update] it is considered[by whom?] one of the most important companies for wine, brandy and liqueurs.

Grupo Estévez: Estevez Group owns the prestigious wineries Marqués del Real Tesoro and Valdespino, one of the oldest in the area (with origins dating from 1430).

Domecq: Domecq is a winemaking company founded by Álvaro Domecq Díez's father. It is located in Jerez de la Frontera.

"Enoturism" is a quite new kind of tourism that looks for places where wines and distilled beverages are produced.[citation needed] Recently[when?] the Route of Sherry Wine and Brandy de Jerez has been established.

Brandy de Jerez is being used in Spanish cuisine in recent years, especially with meats.

Jerez is the original home of the Carthusian sub-strain of the Andalusian horse breed, known as the Caballo cartujano in Spain. In the latter 1400s, the Carthusian monks began breeding horses on lands donated by Álvaro Obertos de Valeto for construction of the Charterhouse of Jerez de la Frontera (la Cartuja de Jerez de la Frontera). When the Spanish Crown decreed that Spanish horse breeders should breed their Andalusian stock with Neapolitan and central European stock, the monks refused to comply,[8] and continued to select their best specimens to develop their own jealously guarded bloodline for almost four hundred years.

Another famous equine institution headquartered in Jerez is the Yeguada Militar de Jerez de la Frontera (known outside Spain as the Yeguada Militar), the Spanish military stud farm dedicated to the breeding of purebred Andalusian and Arabian horses. Founded in 1847, it became the official stud farm of the Spanish military in 1893.

Jerez, the city where flamenco singing began, is also proud of its Andalusian Centre of Flamenco. It was founded in 1993 to safeguard and promote the values and standards of flamenco. It is devoted to the investigation, recovery, and collection of flamenco-related historical documents, whether they are in audio, visual, or journalistic form. It also has a collection of flamenco artifacts, including musical instruments, costumes, promotional posters, sheet music, and postcards. The Centre operates a museum and library to help educate the public and serve as a resource for scholars. Its origins date back to the 18th century and it is currently considered an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO. Many of the most famous personalities of the city are involved in the performance of flamenco, including La Paquera de Jerez, Lola Flores and José Mercé.

Since 1987 the Grand Prix motorcycle racing has been held at the Circuito de Jerez in early May. Thousands of motorbikers from around the world come to the city this week to watch the MotoGP race held in Jerez annually. The race is one of the most watched races in Europe.

Another popular festival is the Feria del Caballo, one of the most famous Spanish fairs, and the most important fair in the province of Cádiz. It is celebrated annually in the Parque González Hontoria for one week in May, occurring always after the Spanish motorcycle Grand Prix. All booths (casetas) at the fair are open to the public, so that attendees may walk into any one of them and enjoy the food, drinks, and dancing. This is one of the main features that differentiates the Feria de Jerez from the rest of the Andalusian Fairs, such as the Seville Fair, where most of the casetas are private and only card-holding members are allowed in.

Holy Week in Jerez, as in other cities in Andalusia, commemorates the Passion of Jesus Christ. It is celebrated by Catholic religious brotherhoods and fraternities that perform penance processions on the streets during the last week of Lent, the week immediately before Easter.

During the Christmas season, from the end of November to the end of December, many peñas (religious clubs) celebrate the holidays with public festivals where anyone can go to drink, eat, dance and sing Christmas carols, accompanied by friction drums called zambombas.

The race course is also a prime destination for Formula One teams wishing to perform off-season testing. In the past it has hosted the F1 race itself, namely the Spanish Grand Prix between 1986 and 1990, before the race moved permanently to the Catalunya Circuit near Barcelona. Since then Jerez hosted the Formula One races a few times, with the designation of the European Grand Prix in 1994 and the controversial race in 1997.

The Complejo Municipal de Chapín is a complex of sports facilities that includes a football stadium and field, a baseball field, equestrian facilities and a Sports Hall, as well as a futsal field and basketball and volleyball courts.

The Estadio Municipal de Chapín, a multi-purpose stadium, was built in 1988 and seats 20,523 spectators. In 2002 the stadium was remodeled to hold the 2002 FEI World Equestrian Games. The whole grandstand was covered with a roof, and a hotel and spa-gym were added. It was historically the home of Xerez CD, the city's club founded in 1947 and known simply as Xerez, which played in the top division in the 2009–2010 season. Currently, the stadium is the home of Xerez Deportivo FC, founded in 2013 to replace the old Xerez club.

Venenciadores de Jerez, the city's baseball team, is currently without a home field and awaits completion of one in the Complejo Municipal de Chapín.

The main futsal team in Jerez is Xerez Deportivo FC (also known as Xerez Toyota Nimauto for sponsorship reasons). It was founded in 2014 and currently plays in the Ruiz Mateos Sports Center and the Palacio Municipal de Deportes de Chapín in Segunda Andaluza.

The most important rugby club is Club Rugby Xerez, which trains at the Pradera Hípica in Chapín.

The Domecq Stadium was the first football stadium in Jerez de la Frontera. It was the home of Xerez CD and Jerez Industrial CF before its demolition. The Stadium del Parque (Park Stadium) was built in 1923 and remodeled (with the name of Domecq Stadium) in 1932 by the architect Francisco Hernández Rubio. It held 20,523 and it was demolished in 1988.

The University of Cádiz, the provincial university, has a campus in Jerez. It specializes in socio-political studies.

The city is also home to a member of the Official School of Languages (Escuela Oficial de Idiomas) and a centre of the National Distance Education University (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED).

El Aeropuerto de Jerez, also known as Aeropuerto de La Parra, is the main airport in the province of Cádiz. It is located 8 km (5 mi) north of the city centre and is connected to the city by train and bus.

It was built in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War by the Nationalists in order to transport soldiers from Africa to Spain. The airport was open to civil traffic in 1992. It is the third most important airport in Andalucia after Malaga and Seville.

According to official population data from INE, the municipality of Jerez had 212,876[10] inhabitants as of January 1, 2015. This makes Jerez the most populous city in the province, fifth in Andalusia, and 25th in Spain.